Diplomat Pharmacy (DPLO) Stock Plummets on Q3 Results, Guidance

Diplomat Pharmacy (DPLO) posted a third-quarter earnings miss and issued a downbeat forecast for the year.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Diplomat Pharmacy (DPLO) were plunging 37.71% to $13.94 on heavy trading volume Thursday morning after reporting lower-than-expected results for the third quarter and cutting its outlook for the full year.

Diplomat Pharmacy blamed the downbeat results on weakness in its hepatitis C business as well as direct-and-indirect renumeration fees.

For the full year, Diplomat Pharmacy now expects to report adjusted earnings between 83 cents and 87 cents per share on revenue between $4.4 billion and $4.6 billion. The company had previously anticipated adjusted earnings between 90 cents and 95 cents per share on revenue between $4.5 billion and $4.9 billion.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet are looking for adjusted earnings of 87 cents per share on $4.59 billion in revenue for the year.

Leerink subsequently downgraded the stock to "market perform" from "outperform" and slashed its price target to $18 from $35.

Diplomat Pharmacy is facing "significant headwinds" from direct-and-indirect renumeration fees, and there is risk to negative revisions to inflation assumptions in 2017, the firm said.

About 10.43 million shares of Diplomat Pharmacy have been traded so far today, well above the company's average trading volume of roughly 918,764 shares a day.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates the stock as a "hold" with a ratings score of C-.